


Expressions of Trust

by hollow_echos



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:54:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_echos/pseuds/hollow_echos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've come a long way since the three of them got together, but there are still bumps along the way. A heated discussion sends Parker running, the boys set out to track her down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expressions of Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tooth_and_claw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooth_and_claw/gifts).



> Happy Holidays tooth_and_claw! Hope this fic helps make your holiday season an enjoyable one.

“So where did you end up going after the David Job?” Hardison queried as his eyes skipped across lines of code on his computer screen.

 

From where Parker sat draped over the couch sideways she cocked her head and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Where did you end up? You asked first, you answer first.”

 

He shrugged. “I’m not shy about sharing it. I mean I spent a bit of time with my Nana. I don’t get out to that part of the country much with everything we normally got going on. It was a nice break.”

 

She scrunched up her nose. “Sounds…quiet. Too quiet. I’d get bored.”

 

He chuckled. “I know you would, but it was a nice slice of heaven for me. She’s getting older, you know? I like to make sure I’m getting stealing time with her when I can.”

 

“Well I stole more exciting things than time in our time off,” she responded. “I added some wonderful pieces to my personal collection. Some of the museums still haven’t realized they were robbed. The forgeries I had commissioned were that good.”

 

Hardison shook his head. “You are something else.”

 

She nodded fervently. “One of a kind, like you’re always telling me. I thought it was something you liked.”

 

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, dear.” He paused the line of conversation for a moment as he worked on bypassing a particularly difficult part of the CIA’s firewall without tripping any alarms. It took a very fine attention to detail to accomplish that. “You had to have done more than just steal things. It was a good chunk of time we had away. I tried to track you, you know? I got wisps of information here and there, but nothing concrete. You were a ghost.”

 

“That’s what we were supposed to do. Fly under the radar, avoid getting caught. It’s important to have rock solid aliases specifically for times that that.”

 

“I would’ve helped you with your aliases if you had asked. You know that, right?” Hardison asked.

 

“I know. And you helped with my day-to-day aliases. Like Alice White, that one is flawless. Much more solid than any of my other ones. But it’s important to keep one or two in my back pocket, just in case. Contingencies on contingencies, that’s how thieves and criminals get by.”

 

“I hope your views on that have changed a bit at least, now that you and Eliot and I are doing the relationship thing. We rely on one another, that’s what a relationship is. And I have made those plans for all of us, together. You both matter to me a tremendous amount.”

 

Parker turned her gaze to the floor and bit her lip. “You guys are important to me too.”

 

He paused in his hacking and turned his chair toward her. “Do you still have those other aliases, those other contingency plans? That are just for you in case shit hit the fan?”

 

She was tapping her foot. It was a nervous tick of hers Hardison had noticed over their time together. It was almost answer enough. “Parker?”

 

“Yes,” she blurted out, an edge of panic in her voice. “I know we have plans too, and we talked about letting the other ones go and that you and Eliot did, but I just…things have gone wrong before-”

 

A loud alarm blaring from his computer cut her off.

 

“Damn it, give me a minute here Parker. Sorry.”

 

Hardison was forced to look back to his computer screen, that alarm meant that someone was trying to follow his cyber trail back and ID him. The timing couldn’t have been worse. His fingers raced across the keyboard as he tried to evade the net in which they were trying to snare him.

 

It was a mediocre attempt to catch him, they never would. A minute or two later, convinced that his anonymity was safe, he looked back up to finish their conversation. A double take found the couch empty. A survey of the room found the window open and Parker gone.

 

“Damn it.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

“What do you mean Parker’s gone?” Eliot asked.

 

“I mean she’s gone, dude. We were discussing aliases and about how we had all kind of unofficially agreed to let go of the ones we had set-up before all this and just keep the ones we had made together. The ones where we would split up if need be but be able to _find_ one another when the time came for it.”

 

“And she just bolted?” Eliot asked. He set the grocery bags on the counter. He gave a fleeting thought to the refrigeratables that he should move into the fridge before abandoning them, but those items were replaceable. Parker wasn’t. This was more important at the moment. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

 

“Hardison rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. “Like I said, we were discussing this stuff, I was just asking her if she still had her aliases from before-“

 

“Stop there. Hardison, you _know_ how flighty she is about this stuff. Anything that speaks to commitment. Even the small stupid stuff. When I bought her favorite cereal to stock at my place so she would have something to eat when she spent the night, she took the box with her because she thought that was what people do.”

 

“I know, I wasn’t trying to press her about it. I just…the plans I’ve made are the best anyone can do. I know they are solid. And if things go to hell, I want to know we are all safe. And I want to know that we can find each other. I can’t guarantee anything that some second-rate hacker put together in a back alley somewhere. She’s important. You’re both important, and I need to know you’re safe.” Hardison’s voice broke. He was breathing hard.

 

Eliot sighed, getting up and walking over to put a hand on the hacker’s shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze. He knew that touch helped ground the hacker from time to time. Just a reminder that they were still there, still corporeal, still a constant presence in one another’s lives.

 

“We all care about one another. That’s clear as day by now. And yeah, Parker’s a bit different. Each thread we string between the three of us she sometimes perceives as something tying her down. She’s used to having to bolt, to run, to protect herself, and the notion that she might not be able to do that cleanly is scary. We’ll find her and make this right. You have any leads?”

 

Eliot pulled up a chair next to Hardison’s computer and the two of them got to work.

 

-X-X-X-

 

People were finicky. They did things that she didn’t expect and that made them difficult. Ask her to pick a lock, and the tumblers would line up in just the right order in mere seconds. Ask her to read a person’s emotional state or guess what they were going to say next, and fuck, she’d rather hide in a hole somewhere or jump off a building than deal with that.

 

She hadn’t meant to run out on Hardison like that. Eliot and he both had spoken to her enough about that particular tendency to let her know that it wasn’t the right response by normal standards.

 

But he was angry with her; his tone had an edge on it that made her want to flinch away. It was the tone her foster parents would take before they sent her to her room or the corner or the closet or away and back into the system altogether. She wasn’t good at these people things. She had tried to explain this to Hardison and Eliot too. And still, they insisted that they wanted her as more than a teammate.

 

At first it was easy things. They wanted to go to the movies together, they wanted to take her out to dinner. They wanted to know what she wanted to do that night and all three of them would do it together. They never pushed; Eliot and Hardison were never pushy about things.

 

When she started staying the night and slept on the couch first before being willing to join them in Hardison’s giant bed, they hadn’t asked questions, just shrugged like it was natural. And she liked that about the two of them. They got that she did things in her own way, and her path was a bit twisty where most people liked to go straight, but she still got to the same destination in her own time.

 

She had made progress, the two of them made sure to express that to her in spades. Even so, there were times she questioned if the fit was right. Eliot had done enough things before joining the team that a fair number of governments would pay in gold and silver and precious gems for his head on a silver platter. Still, even with that, he had willingly laid aside his back-up plans and aliases to rely entirely on the ones Hardison had designed for them.

 

 How he could _trust_ like that even after all he had been through. It was a foreign language to her. She tried, she really did. And the boys could see her effort and praised her for it, but that paranoia was so ingrained that she wore it like a second skin.

 

Her warehouse home had seventeen different escape routes, eighteen if you counted the bolt hole she was halfway through installing in the roof. She valued each and every one for the security they provided.

 

Her aliases were the same. Hardison’s aliases were the first line of defense, and quite likely all she would ever need and then some. But her other ones? The ones she had put together from her time before the team, before them? She maintained them to this day just in case.

 

-X-X-X-

 

She wasn’t at her warehouse. The place didn’t look like it had been visited in a week or more. A fine layer of dust had settled in over the table and the bookshelves. That part didn’t surprise Hardison so much, Parker and Eliot had both stayed at his place for the past several nights. He’d moved to a larger apartment specifically to accommodate the three of them.

 

Not that the last place had been too small, he had loved that apartment. Parker had loved the easy roof access with the rappelling rig he’d installed up there for her. At the end of the day, though, he felt they should each have some space to themselves, even in a shared space. Eliot had the largest room where he had set up some free weights and a punching bag.

 

Parker had a small room where she had a few potted plants by the window, an eclectic collection of items he had given up on making heads or tales of, and a table she kept immaculately organized where she practiced with her lock picks or worked on harnesses.

 

It had worked too. When they had a bit of space each to call their own, they spent more time there. They stopped bringing overnight bags and started just leaving part of their wardrobes at the apartment. It felt like home.

 

Eliot and he tried to respect Parker’s privacy and the sanctity of her space at the apartment, but after debating it back and forth, had entered her room.

 

“You see anything that’s changed since the last time you were in here?” Eliot asked.

 

Hardison shook his head. “It’s all different. Even the furniture is rearranged. Parker never keeps anything the same for too long. I stopped short of letting her rearrange my Star Wars figurines in my office. That was crossing a _line.”_

The bed was made; the clothes were put away in their respective drawers. On the whole, Parker kept a pretty organized place. Well, at least in her own room. She was constantly leaving a half-eaten box of cereal on his kitchen counter or somewhere else equally annoying. But part of him thought she did that on purpose just to remind him that she was there. As if he could ever forget. To be honest, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

He bent down on his knees and pulled out a steel fireproof box from under the bed. It was where Parker kept her most valuable items. If she was going to leave, these were the items she wouldn’t leave behind. It felt like intruding, but he had to know. Parker had also shown them both this box and its contents when she began leaving it here as a gesture of faith. She trusted them with that intimate knowledge.

 

He popped the lid open on the box. Her bunny sat in one corner, one of Eliot’s bandanas, part of Lucille 1.0, and some sort of gizmo that could only have come from Hardison’s efforts were also present. He let out a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t leave these things if she were bolting for good, she’d be back. It was a good sign, at least.

Eliot backed out of Parker’s room and shut the door behind him. The two of them retreated to the kitchen and plopped down at the table. “What about tracking her? Can you track her phone or something?”

 

“That was the first thing I tried. And then I looked into all of the aliases I had put together for her to see if there was any activity there. Nothing, she’s off the grid.”

 

“And you taught her how to do that effectively. Our chances of finding her if she doesn’t want to be found aren’t good,” Eliot responded.

 

“I mean this is Parker, she’s a ghost when she wants to be. Should we just give her some space and let her come back on her own time?” Hardison asked.

 

Eliot shook his head slowly. “Normally I’d be all about that approach. Parker’s a bit like a skittish horse sometimes. You just have to pretend you don’t see them and let them come up and investigate on their own time. The fact that she left mid-debate makes me think that she probably assumes you’re angry with her.”

 

Hardison snapped his gaze in Eliot’s direction at that notion, alarmed at that thought.

 

Eliot held up a hand. “I know it’s not the case. And if I had to guess, you didn’t raise your voice or anything. We’re both good about that, especially where she’s concerned. She just has a certain way of viewing things sometimes, and that’s how I’m guessin’ she’s interpreting all this. Us being angry that she wouldn’t give up her aliases. We’ll find her and we’ll set this straight. It’ll be okay.”

 

“I’ll snoop around. There are some facial recognition programs that some different governments have been playing around with. It might turn up something. Worth a shot at least,” Hardison responded.

 

-X-X-X-

 

Parker hadn’t meant to flee quite as far as she had. She’d spun through New York City and dropped into the apartment that particular alias kept rented in a lower key area of town. Real estate in the metropolitan was expensive, though, and she hated the thought of spending hard earned (or stolen) money on a space she hardly even used.

 

So when she opened the door on that apartment, she frowned as she remembered just how small the apartment she rented here was. It was too cramped for the mood she was feeling. It was too tight; it made things too hard to breathe with the walls so close to one another. She closed the door before even taking two steps inside the apartment and was shuffling her next alias up out of the deck.

 

Prague felt better. It had always been her second home in the back of her head. It was where she had honed her skills against some of the most complex museum security systems in the world. For her mood, Prague was right.

 

Her alias here was a woman living on family inheritance left to her by some rich uncle or another. She had more low-key aliases, of course, the ones that no one would take a second glance at. It was nice to be able to have one or two that would allow her to actually enjoy the riches she had amassed during the course of her career. Nothing too lavish, a nice car, a motorcycle (Eliot had instilled in her a love of a good bike), and a private flat.

 

Ellen Hart kept primarily to herself; Parker had designed this alias that way. It afforded her privacy. She swung through a coffee shop and purchased some complicated-named beverage, Hardison had taught her the importance of leaving a paper trail. It made the alias credible, these little mundane tasks.

 

She did the things that she normally found enjoyable, driving her car along the river, visiting her favorite diamond jewelers and brainstorming how she would break in if she decided to go for it. Somehow, there still seemed to be an itch she couldn’t scratch. Something was off.

 

She found herself gravitating toward the little café she eaten at with Eliot and Hardison when she had brought them to the city. It wasn’t anything special, typical local cuisine, inflated prices. But she thought of the way Eliot had commented that he would like to know how the chef made his sauce, or the way that Hardison asked why they had given them so many forks, didn’t you need just one?

 

This city was her stomping ground. It was where she had matured from a thief-in-training to seasoned master. The hum of the city around her used to be enough. And true, some parts of the city had changed – new architecture projects and shops had ebbed and flowed. But more than that, she suspected it was her who had changed.

 

It was Eliot and Hardison she was missing so many miles and an ocean away.

 

“You know you had us panicked when you just off and disappeared like that.”

 

She whipped around to find Eliot and Hardison standing before her. “What are you guys doing here?”

 

Hardison stepped forward. “Facial recognition software the government here is putting to good use. It’s newer tech-“

 

Eliot elbowed Hardison lightly. “Before Hardison drags us all down the techno-gizmo rabbit hole. We’re here to bring you home, if you’ll come.”

 

She rubbed her arm. “I know I shouldn’t have run off like that. I was going to come back. I just needed time to think.”

 

“And we don’t want to crowd you either. If you need that time and space, take it,” Hardison said. The two hadn’t moved any closer to her, not exactly sure of where they stood at the moment.

 

Parker stepped up to close the space. “I’ve had lots of time to think. And what I think is that this trip to Prague has had something missing. It was the two of you. Stay with me? My flat here isn’t quite as big as our place back in the States, but the bed is big enough for three to sleep on, there’s a decently fast Wi-Fi, and a kitchen that should meet most of your demands.”

 

“I could get behind that. Airplane food is still crap, even in this day and age,” Hardison added with a shudder.

 

“So we’re okay?” Parker asked.

 

“We were never mad, Parker. If keeping your separate aliases is important to you, then it’s fine by the both of us. We want you to be comfortable, whatever you need to do that is what you should do,” Hardison added. “If anything, I just worry that the job someone else did on those aliases for you isn’t air tight. That’s the part I’d worry about.”

 

She nodded. “Thank you.”

 

Wrapping an arm over the shoulder of each of her boys, the three of them headed off to her flat.

 

-X-X-X-

 

A few hours and a grocery run later things were feeling more like home. Eliot was slaving over several dishes in the kitchen that smelled good enough to have Parker’s mouth watering. Hardison was working on purchasing their flights back to the U.S. for a few days from now. The three of them had decided that as long as they were in town they might as well do a bit of sight seeing (and okay, maybe Parker had added one museum heist to their itinerary, but the boys hadn’t complained).

 

Sitting down next to Hardison on the couch, she held out a handful of papers and pamphlets to Hardison.

 

He looked at them, brow furrowed. “What are these?”

 

“Passports, paperwork for all of my other aliases besides that ones you made for us.”

 

“Why are you giving them to me?” Hardison asked.

 

“Can you tie up the loose ends, shut them down in a way that won’t bring any attention to them just disappearing all of a sudden? We’ll use yours going forward.”

 

“You sure, Parker? Like we said earlier, it’s okay if you want to hang onto these. No pressure or any of that jazz.”

 

She nodded. “I’m sure. Sometimes that’s part of being in a relationship is. It’s trusting your partners and going all in. I’m in this with you guys, I want you to know that.”

 

“Guy’s, food’s ready! Get in here before it’s cooled down. I won’t forgive you if we’re eating my fish cold, it’ll ruin the taste,” Eliot barked from the kitchen.

 

Hardison took the papers from Parker’s hands and set them next to his computer. “After dinner? We can work on it then.”

 

As she nodded, he pulled her in for a quick kiss, holding her against his chest for just a moment. “We love you, Parker. Know that. And your ways might be a little different than ours at times, but we are always willing to work with you on that. Those little eccentricities are part of who you are, and we love every bit of you as a person and a partner.”

 

She breathed in and out against him, unsure of what to say to that exclamation. Sometimes, though, words weren’t needed. Just being there was enough.

 

“Guys! Food! Let’s go. Sometime in this century would be good,” Eliot’s voice echoed in from the kitchen.

 

The two of them separated, Parker helping pull Hardison to his feet. Together, the three of them gathered in the kitchen to share a wonderful evening of food and quiet time together.

 

-The End-

 

-X-X-X-

 


End file.
